


Dying to Live

by Her_Madjesty



Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [8]
Category: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Among Us (Video Game) Setting, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Gen, Horror Elements, Sort Of A Groundhog Day AU If You Squint, The Enemy of My Enemy is my Sexually Charged...Something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28118592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: The question is never how she ended up in this spaceship somewhere between Gamma and Alpha Quadrants. The question is rather why the lights keep going out.
Relationships: Hero/Don John (Much Ado About Nothing)
Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037376
Comments: 9
Kudos: 14





	Dying to Live

**Author's Note:**

> On the eighth day of Christmas, a harried writer gave to thee...an Among Us!AU?
> 
> Ah, if only this was rated M for fun reasons.
> 
> This is one of the stranger fics I've written throughout this process. Warning now, it's got a bit of a different tone than the rest - there are multiple non-permanent deaths and, as the warning mentions, graphic but brief descriptions of violence, not to mention a tinge of "these characters have too many teeth because they're Imposters." If that's not your bag, do not worry at all! The 18th is going to have something much sweeter.
> 
> In the meanwhile, thank you so much to everyone who's followed the series! This is the first day in a little while that I haven't been rushed to get a story out, so I'm honestly not sure what to say here other than your support means the world, and it's been lovely to see so many repeats in the kudos and comments.
> 
> Now, go forth duly warned and hopefully willing to indulge a silly idea taken way too seriously. I'll see you all on the 18th!
> 
> Edit: anyone in need of a primer, I can recommend [this livestream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hwjQb8_rmE&t=7029s) and this [much shorter basics video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muqaBob6pfw). I don't actually play this game, I just really like the folks in the first video.

Round One

The question is never how she ended up in this spaceship somewhere between Gamma and Alpha Quadrants. The question is rather why the lights keep going out.

Hero frowns at the tangled wire in Electrical, her gloved hands hovering over cables that have seemingly sprung from their proper positions. This is the third time in as many days that the power in the ship has been reduced down to nothing. If it wasn’t from the glow of the light from her space suit, she wouldn’t be able to see her own hand in front of her face. As it stands, now, she can barely make out her own work as she moves the wires back into their proper positions.

The _Messina_ has been stalling for nearly a week now, its engine sabotaged beyond repair. It will be another three weeks, at the least, before a maintenance ship comes through this trade lane with the ability to restore them. Rations, at least, aren’t a worry; the crew had expected to go upwards of a year without seeing another ship.

That was, before things started going wrong.

Hero hums, satisfied, as she brings the wires in electrical back into their proper configuration. She closes the hatch and turns around, relaxing as the lights come back to full power around her. Finding herself alone isn’t so unusual, but she’s more than ready to air her concerns about their faulty wiring to the rest of the crew. It’s better, after all, to talk about these things than it is to let the bad feelings – or, in Hero’s case, concerns – fester.

As she steps out into the hall, though, her plans...change.

For there, in the middle of the otherwise pristine floor, is Dogberry, their head of security – dead.

*

“Where did you find him, sweet?” asks Beatrice, not ten minutes after.

Hero has cemented herself to her side, barely able to bring herself to look at the rest of the crew. Of the seven of them, there are only six left alive. Dogberry may have been an inept security officer, but he was one of the first to bring the lot of them together.

Across the mess table, the rest of the crew look between one another as best they can. Beatrice, in her orange suit, cradles Hero in her arms. Hovering near her in his ostentatious purple is Don Pedro – a prince, back on Terra, who had volunteered to join the lot of them up in space. His man, Claudio, paces near the door in his black suit, running a nervous hand over the back of his neck, while another of his staff, Benedick, in red, passes around ration bars as though they are a comfort.

Don John – the prince’s half-brother, distinguishable by his white suit – busies himself with the HVAC system in the corner. Hero can see the reflection of him in Beatrice’s suit as he clears the greenhouse’s errant leaves out of their air supply. Margaret, one of the women from Hero’s own class of cadets at university hovers near him, watching his every move with a suspicious eye.

(At the time, Hero makes nothing of it – Don John was not well-loved on Terra and only made his way onto the ship at the behest of Dogberry and his half-brother, both of whom claimed that the man’s intellect would make him an asset on their voyage. Her own opinion of him is still developing; he is a man like any other man, if quiet and more likely to keep to himself than he is to play games or even tell stories into the depths of an unrelenting shift. Still, he is...courteous, just as he is to everyone else, save, perhaps, his half-brother.)

Claudio, across the table, reaches out a gloved hand for Hero to take. Feeling weak, Hero reaches back and imagines that she can feel the squeeze of pressure against her fingers.

“I’d just fixed the lights,” she says, her voice fragile through her comm. “And he was out in the middle of the hall, just – gone.”

Her own mask starts to fog for her choked-back tears.

“Did you see what killed him?” prods Don Pedro. Hero feels more than sees Beatrice give him a sharp look, and the man holds his hands up in surrender.

Hero shakes her head. “His mask – it was broken open,” she says. “Like something had slammed into it.”

The lights over their heads flicker. The men look up, Don John making his way back to the table to join them. Margaret follows close behind.

“You say you fixed the lights?” Don John asks, as the shadows around them all grow longer.

Benedick, nearest the door, scoffs. “They’ve been in and out for the past three days, sir,” he says. “You cannot blame the lady for the ship’s shoddy make.”

“Excuse you,” Don Pedro says, his voice tripping a skillful balance between amused and stern, “I commissioned this ship myself.”

“And I mean no offense to your pocketbook, sir, but there’s no escaping this.” Benedick motions upward as the lights flicker again. “Not to mention your choice for head of security. If the man were more inclined to stay at his post, we may not be contending with such an issue.”

“You’re saying Dogberry brought this on himself?” Don John interjects.

The crew shift to look at him. There is a moment of silence that is almost – hysterical, in its awkward agreement – before the crew remember their manners and come back to themselves.

“It’s perfectly possible,” Don Pedro continues on his half-brother’s behalf, “that he ran into the wall in the darkness and ended up hurting himself.”

(And the unfortunate truth is that it really is.)

Hero wants to interject, but Beatrice squeezes her tight. Looking up, Hero can see her cousin’s gaze fixing on Don John, who is watching them from across the table.

“Come,” Benedick says, at last, “there is no need for us to debate it overlong. Even taking good Dogberry’s less than flattering traits into account, it is far too early into this voyage for any one of us to consider killing the others. Let us give the man what rights he is entitled to –” the lights flicker again, and he scowls behind his mask – “and see what we can’t do to get the ship back into order.”

Murmurs of agreement fill the air. The meeting disperses with Benedick, Claudio, and Don Pedro disappearing down towards the storage room, leaving the others to linger behind. What duties they have about the ship can be completed in their own time, so long as they do their work before the cycle’s out.

“I’ve half a mind to go after them,” Hero hears Beatrice murmur under her breath.

“And do what?” says Margaret, leaning comfortably against one of the cafeteria angles. “There’s nothing to be done. The men have made up their mind. Trying to convince them that something’s gone proper wrong will be as challenging as bringing this ship back into working order.”

Hero turns and considers her friend, unable to ignore the way Margaret’s voice shakes.

“You think something’s amiss,” she says, meaning to ask a question but failing in her tone.

Margaret glances across the room.

Don John, lingering behind the party of men, hovers by the door, one hand rubbing the space where his neck would be were their spacesuits not so bulky. He starts when the women’s attention turns to him – and Hero feels something like confusion bubble in her chest

“Forgive me” he says, inching closer towards the door. “I – am inclined to let my...brother and his men conduct their duties as they will. Should they need me, I will go.”

Beatrice throws up her hands in disgust. “Or you could go now and help us bring this ship back into order.” She tosses her head back, then looks to Hero. “Whatever is wrong with this ship,” she says, “I will wring it out of the vents and the walls, even if I have to do the job myself..” She smeks her helmet against Hero’s, some distant parody of a forehead kiss, before she moves from the cafeteria, chasing the party of men down one of the nearest halls.

Don John, Hero, and Margaret listen to her steps disappear, righteous as they are with determination. Only when that noise has stopped does Hero dare to glance at Don John.

He is staring not at her but at Margaret, something cold in his expression.

Margaret glances back at him, one eyebrow creeping high on her head. When he looks away, chastised, she only sighs, then stretches. “Well. As eventful as that was, I believe I hear my bunk calling.” Hero hears something pop as she pushes herself away from the table. “Be well, sweet Hero – Don John.” Before she goes, she reaches out and takes Hero’s hand in hers. “Whatever manner of funeral we manage in this vacuum, I imagine it will be both more and less than what Dogberry imagined himself to be worthy of.”

Despite the confusion in her heart, Hero allows herself a moment of solemn agreement. Mirroring Beatrice, she reaches forward and gently knocks her helmet against Margaret’s. Through the layers of glass, she thinks she sees the other woman smile.

“In the interim,” she hears Don John say, almost as though he is speaking to himself, “I believe I will have myself something to eat.”

If you asked her, in some later time, Hero isn’t certain that she could explain what happened next.

For an instant, there is Margaret, looking at her with fondness and with no small amount of sadness.

Then, there is a spike – a protrusion, something _wrong_ – sticking out of Margaret’s abdomen.

There is no time for Hero to scream. Margaret’s eyes do not even go wide with shock; rather, she is here and gone with such haste that she slumps into Hero with that same fond expression on her face. The look only dies as whatever has pierced her retreats, dragging back into the maw that Don John, in his white suit, seems to boast.

Hero – freezes. She cradles Margaret between confused, nearly limp hands, pressing her rapidly cooling body to her chest as she stares. Her mouth falls open, and she waits for the scream – but no sound comes out.

Don John studies her for a long moment, then reaches out as though to kiss her hand in apology. Hero flinches back from him, dragging Margaret with her as she tries to clamber over the nearest table.

Finally, she finds her voice.

“Beatrice!”

The scream echoes across the whole of the ship. Don John shakes his head at her, the heave of his shoulders almost disappointed. Then, he turns on his heel and marches for the emergency PA system in the middle of the cafeteria.

“Beatrice!”

There are footsteps in the distance – someone running. Hero closes her eyes and holds onto Margaret’s body, desperate for the world to right itself again.

“Help!”

A buzzer sounds throughout the ship. Within seconds, the whole of the crew, save for the departed Dogberry, appear in the cafeteria, all of them huffing and puffing as though their lives depend on it. Don John, his eyes now wide with shock, points a disturbingly steady hand in her direction.

“I – whatever it is, it’s got the lady Hero!”

Her pulse hammers in her ears. There is a touch on her arm. Hero pulls back on instinct, but it is only Beatrice, looking at her with confusion, concern, and no small amount of terror. Her hand shakes as she wipes some of Margaret’s blood off of Hero’s mask.

“Hero?” she whispers, her voice cracking over the crew’s shared comms.

Behind her, Don John rails on. “You all left – and she looked at me,” he says, gathering the men close to him. “She told me she was hungry; that Dogberry would not satisfy her.”

Claudio looks at her over Benedick’s shoulder, one hand twitching for the blaster he keeps at his side. Don Pedro, on the other hand, falls into step with his brother, his jovial face darkening with a frown.

“No!” Hero shouts, her first words in what feels like years. She can feel her throat closing for the tears hiding there. “No, I did no such thing! I would never harm a hair on Margaret’s head, let alone do something like – this.” She motions down to the still body of her friend and feels a sickness building in her stomach. “No, it was him – him and some terrible thing he summoned out of his stomach. Her wound, look, it is just like Dogberry’s! He stabbed her, and now...” she chokes, here, and finds Beatrice’s hand on her back; Beatrice at her side as the men across the room seem to fall into line.

“Why?” Hero demands, looking past the crowd and into Don John’s still eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

For a second – maybe less – there is something like sympathy in his expression. But it disappears behind a shuddered brow, and he inclines his head towards his half-brother.

Already, Hero can see the faces of the men she thought she knew darkening against her.

“Hero would do no such thing,” Beatrice is saying on her behalf, standing bodily between her and the men. “She isn’t capable! Sweet, I saw you not a few moments ago; there was hardly time for you to act this way. And even if you could, what motivation would she have?”  
“She said,” Don John replies, his voice low and beguiling, “that she was hungry.”

“Then why wouldn’t she have waited for you to leave the room?” Beatrice spits.

“Lady.” It is Claudio who speaks – and for a moment, Hero thinks herself saved. She sets Margaret’s body aside as gently as she can and reaches out a hand to him. The effort, though, is in vain. Claudio reaches for his blaster almost at once, prompting all but Benedick to do the same. Even Beatrice has her weapon out – but it is pointed at Claudio and not at her cousin.

(This from the man who not earlier in the shift offered to walk with her to electrical; this from the man she would have allowed to be at her side, had his liege lord not called him away a few moments later. Oh, more fool, she.)

“Lady,” Claudio says again. “Can you prove that you are not the monster he claims you to be?”

Hero feels as though the breath has been knocked from her lungs. “How would you have me prove such a thing?”

“She was the one who found Dogberry, wasn’t she?” Don John says, _sotte-voce_ , as though he is just realizing the connection himself. Behind Claudio, Hero can see him turning to Don Pedro, clapping a brotherly hand down on that shoulder.

Claudio shifts – and Hero knows that he has heard. He hesitates before looking back to her.

And there is doubt in his eyes.

Hero reaches out for him again. He flinches back from her, nearly stumbling in his attempt to get away.

“Lady Beatrice,” he says, his voice shaking. “Please – you are not safe.”

Beatrice shrieks something unintelligible from behind her mask. In any other situation, it would make Hero laugh behind her hand, but her cousin’s rage is the only thing standing now between her and these new enemies.

“Lady Beatrice.” It is Don Pedro, at last, who speaks. Hero can see even Benedick stiffen at his side. “My brother is correct. There is no reason for him to lie if he did not fear for his life. Look,” and he motions towards Hero, “she is covered in the woman’s blood. She was the first to discover Dogberry. If she is not leading us into some manner of devious trap, I cannot understand what else may be amiss here.”

“He is a monster!” Hero cries, though the words come out softer than she means them to. Don John hears her, as does Benedick, but it seems that Claudio and Don Pedro do not. “He is tricking you! He will kill you all if you give him half the chance!”

“Do not,” Don Pedro spits at her, “besmirch my brother’s name with your lies.” With a wave of his hand, he turns. “Remove her from the ship, gentlemen – we will solve this problem before it kills us all.”

“Remove –?” Benedick, at last, speaks, his voice naught but broken glass.

“Out the airlock,” Don Pedro commands. “Go. Lady Beatrice, if you will not comply, you will be restrained.”

“You may try!” her cousin snarls – but it is already too late. Hero scrambles backwards as Claudio approaches her, Don John hanging back but not far away. The moment Beatrice moves to stop him from grabbing her, it is Benedick who stops her, shoving her arms up before she has a moment to fire her blaster.

And the next several minutes are nothing but chaos.

*

When all is said and done, Hero is sent on her death march to the airlock.

That does not mean, however, that the march is a quiet one.

The princes leave Benedick to restrain Beatrice, while Claudio marches some paces behind his liege lord, his eyes ever-darkening with anger. Don Pedro holds Hero’s hands behind her back with one of his own, using the other to press his blaster to the crook of her neck.

Ahead of the pack, Don John leads the way.

(And some small part of her mind wonders just how difficult it would be to draw her own blaster on him; to shoot him in the back before she goes to her doom. It would be enough, she knows, to save Beatrice, her only ally – but Don Pedro’s grip is unrelenting.)

Don John pauses before the airlock, looking back at his followers. Then, with an open hand, he reaches out.

It is a mockery, the way he takes her wrist. But Don Pedro follows her as they go, and together, the princes manhandle her into the airlock.

“Mute her comms,” Don John orders (and Hero sees Don Pedro’s eyes narrow at the order, even as he moves to do as his half-brother commands). “There is no need for her cousin to hear her as she goes. It will only torture her more.”

“Claudio –” Don Pedro turns, but the younger man is already shaking his head.

“I will not go,” he says. He takes a step forward, only to be caught by Don Pedro’s hands. “I would have loved you,” he spits around the prince’s grip. “I would have made a new life with you, and yet, here you are.”

If there are words to be spoken, Hero cannot find them. She opens her mouth, but Claudio turns from her, shaking his head in disgust.

She is left with the picture of his hand on his blaster before Don John hustles her into the airlock.

Don Pedro leaves the room. Not a minute later, the noise in her helmet goes as silent as a winter morning.

Don John hesitates, looking at her. Hero stares back, her eyes full of tears and her heart fuming, for the first time in as long as she can remember.

Finally, Don John steps forward.

“Are you going to kill me?” Hero demands.

Don John – pauses.

“No,” he murmurs into the quiet between them. Hero can just barely hear him without their comms to aid her. “I believe the vacuum is better suited for the job.”

“Tell yourself that,” Hero spits back. She steps back as he takes another step in her direction. Seeing his hands rise, she understands his intent – but she rips her own helmet off before he has a chance.

The air in the spaceship is thin. Her suit beeps for the sudden drop in her oxygen levels, but Hero knows that it does not matter now.

Don John does not follow suit.

“You have killed me,” Hero tells him, bringing a fist up to better slam it into his chest. She can barely see his reaction behind the glass, but he is still breathing, still staring at her. “No matter what you tell yourself to better sleep – to better complete your task – you have killed me. And there is no escaping that.”

(And she wonders if it really matters to him – Margaret, after all, is as dead as Dogberry, and he has made no move to reveal his intent elsewhere.)

For a moment longer, there is silence between them. Then, in the quiet, he replies.

“Consider this,” he says, his voice low – she can barely hear him over the shuddering of the ship. “Where you die, Lady Hero, I have the opportunity to live.”

“You are a monster,” Hero repeats, venom sinking into her heart.

The look Don John offers her is on this side of sad – and she would have believed it of him, not an hour earlier. Now, though, she looks at him and sees those rows of teeth, unnatural in their placement along his jaw.

Outside of the airlock, Beatrice bursts through the door. Hero shifts and watches Benedick appear to seize her by the waist. She watches them – and only them – as Don John steps back out of the airlock, shutting the door between them.

Hero does not gift him her final glance. Instead, desperately, she presses herself up against the glass and meets her cousin’s eye.

She mouths the last of her love, her curls falling free around her shoulders.

She has not seen Beatrice cry in years, but her cousin’s eyes are red with tears.

Hero memorizes that fury. She presses it close to her heart, along with all the love she has to bear.

The door to the vacuum behind her clicks.

Hero closes her eyes.

The air leaves the room all at once. And then there is nothing but out, out and out and out into the cold grip of the vacuum that tugs at her suit and steals her breath and –

And –

And –

Round Two

She wakes.

When she wakes, she wakes gasping.

And she remembers Claudio’s hateful eyes staring at her through the viewport; Don John’s pity as he closed the door behind her; Beatrice’s screaming. But Beatrice, now, looks at her with all of the love she’s ever borne her cousin, and Claudio flushes as she makes her way out into the hall. Don John lingers behind, his gait slow even as he marches steadily onward towards the cafeteria.

It…

Doesn’t make any sense.

She goes throughout the day in a daze, as though her memories are nothing but remnants from a bad dream. But there goes Dogberry, as the shifts start to turn, wandering down the halls on his own.

There is his body outside of electrical. Hero stares at it, the lights around her dimmed down to nothing, and nearly vomits both from the sight of his snapped neck and the fear roiling in her stomach.

In her panic, she does not hear footsteps in the hall. She does not see Claudio until it is too late – and there is his yellow suit, standing across the body from her.

His eyes, when she looks at him, are wide with distrust and fear. He reaches for his comm before she can stop him –

And then, it is much the same.

Don John watches her with raised eyebrows as she struggles to defend herself. Margaret, at least, is still alive and breathing; Hero pleads with her, but a tinge of the men’s fear has polluted even her mind.

Again, it is only Beatrice who stands between Hero and the wide world.

It is not Don John, however, who walks her to the airlock when the men decide her fate.

Instead, it is Claudio.

Their walk is no less guarded than her first, with Don Pedro taking the lead and Don John taking up the rear. But it is Claudio’s tight grip keeping Hero’s arms behind her back, and his near-constant commentary in her ear.

Little of it bears repeating. But she feels the hatred in him brewing, as though she has worked to deceived only him; as though there are no other parties on this ship besides the two of them.

“I would have loved you,” he says again – and she listens more closely this time. There is longing, maybe, in those boyish tones of his, but his “would” lilts up in a higher fashion, leaving the rest of the sentence to end in a hiss.

Confused despite her terror, Hero chances a glance backwards.

And there –

In the corner of his mouth –

Teeth.

Claudio catches her looking, then glances ahead. Don Pedro’s back is turned – and so he offers her a smile. It is a poor mirror of Don John’s halfhearted sympathy; this, while a cousin to that look, takes hatred to bed with it. Claudio’s teeth are sharp as though filed, and there are rows of them in his mouth, ready to rend and tear as though he is a shark and she is his meal.

(And she cannot help but wonder if this is what Dogberry saw before he died, or if it was Don John’s spike, in the end, that took him.)

“Why?” she whispers, barely audible through their comms.

Claudio squeezes her wrists. She cries out, but ahead, Don Pedro does not turn back, assuming, as he must, that she’s putting up a fight.

“Sweet Hero,” purrs the voice in her ear, “poor, sweet Hero. In another life, perhaps, there would have been a chance, but I was just. So. Hungry.”

Though their helmets separate them, Hero swears she can feel his breath on her neck. She closes her eyes and doesn’t bother to hold back the sob lodged in her throat. Ahead, Don Pedro opens the airlock, and Claudio all but throws her inside.

He does not follow her in, does not make nice as Don John tried to do. Instead, within an instant, the door to the airlock is shut behind her.

Hero cannot help it; she throws herself against it, pleas lingering over her lips. Within moments, that same snow-silence fills her helmet, and she is left with nothing but the sound of her own voice echoing in her head.

Beatrice does not appear to her this time. Instead, in the instant before the airlock clicks, she is left with three men: Claudio, Don Pedro, and Don John.

Don Pedro does not look at her as she dies.

Claudio does.

Don John does, as well, but where Hero could burn in the passion in Claudio’s eyes, she could freeze in his, that cool confusion and shade of sympathy lingering until the cold of space comes for her again.

She has her helmet this time; it does not go as quickly. Floating back, she catches the light of the sun off of the _Messina_ , watches the crew’s faces shrink in the viewport –

And then she is gone.

Round Three

And then she wakes.

This third harrowing morning, Hero nearly cannot bring herself to open her eyes. When she does, her nausea overtakes her in an instant. She reaches for the nearest trash can and vomits almost at once.

Beatrice, up and pulling her hair back from her face, turns at the sound. Margaret, eyes still heavy with sleep, takes a moment to realize what’s happened, then immediately reaches for a bottle of water.

“What’s going on, sweet?” Beatrice asks, coming to kneel next to her cousin’s bed. Hero lets her pull her hair away from her face, too preoccupied with the emptiness settling in her stomach.

“It can’t be morning sickness, can it?” asks Margaret, a bit of laughter still in her voice, even as she pats Hero’s hand.

“If it is, I’ll kill Claudio myself.”

And there is Hero again, vomiting into her bucket. Beatrice makes soothing sounds beside her, while Margaret yanks her bottle of water out of the way.

But Hero can pay neither of them any mind. For out in the hall, there is Claudio’s laughter; one of Benedick’s jokes still hanging in the air.

There is the hate in Claudio’s eyes; the press of too many teeth against the curve of his jaw.

And Hero berates her own mind, for even if Don John was the clearest of their villains, she should have known better than to trust her own heart.

*

By the time the women manage to leave their bunks, the beginning of first shift has long passed. The men greet them with equal parts amusement and concern before sending them about their tasks for the day. Through it all, Beatrice hovers near Hero, walking with her through the halls and talking of nothing – but mostly, Hero notices in her half-aware haze, Benedick.

(And perhaps the two of them are meant for some better, happier fate, if only Hero can avoid dying.)

The longer she walks, though, the more the repetition seems...calculated. The lights go out when she expects them to; she makes her way to electrical, as she expects she is expected to.

Dogberry dies, as she expects him to, but she reports him, this time, desperate to get away from Claudio’s approach. Despite the expectation that came with it, she still spends that shift crying into her mask. She retreats from the cafeteria before their meeting has even adjourned, wanting nothing more than to escape and deny Don John the opportunity he needs to throw Margaret’s lifeless body against her chest.

She stays in the bunks until the lights start to dim with the evening.

Waiting.

It is the middle of the late shift when she gives up sleep for lost. Listless, she makes her way out of the women’s bunk. It is a dangerous move, she knows, but she cannot help herself. Hero wanders the halls with her suit’s light on and finds herself standing over the spot where Dogberry’s body fell, wondering if there was any way for her to move faster.

Anything she could have done to have kept them all a little safer.

Someone clears their throat behind her. Hero flinches, despite herself, and turns to find Don John’s white suit all but glowing in the dim light of the ship.

It is difficult to see his face through his mask, but then again, it always has been. Even so, she can sense one of his eyebrows quirk upward.

She’s not where she’s supposed to be, after all.

Hero waits for...something. Anything. Tentacles, teeth, the feel of his hands on the neck of her suit.

But nothing comes.

“You’re out late, lady,” Don John says, at last, when the silence has drug on too long.

“I am,” Hero agrees, her voice a trembling thing. She does not want to play polite with him, can remember his voice brought up against hers in the first meeting to herald her death. She wonders if this late-night rendezvous will damn her this time around – if she’ll even have a moment to defend herself, or if he’ll skewer her here and find someone else to blame.

But Don John only studies her in the time she gives him. Eventually, he holds out his arm.

Hero stares at him. She hears him sigh over their shared comms and sees him give his elbow a shake.

She cannot feel him underneath her hand with they come together, but his presence is unmistakable at her side.

“You seem troubled.”

“I am,” Hero says, her grip tightening despite herself. Don John guides her around the corner, past the reactor and its many neon lights.

“Was Dogberry so dear to you?”

“One does not have to be dear to me to be mourned.” She doesn’t snap it, but the turn of phrase takes on a harsher tone than she intends. Hero ducks her head almost immediately, but Don John doesn’t seem to pay the slip any mind. Instead, she hears him hum – almost thoughtful.

They move up past the reactor, towards security. Instead of continuing, Don John deposits her inside, in front of the impossibly-large system of cameras the crew has in place.

Hero makes her way to the open seat without so much as looking back. She hears him huff over the comms and cannot help but wonder whether or not she’s offended him.

By the time she looks back, he’s come to lean against the desk, the picture, in some ways, of relaxation. He motions her attention towards the screen, and she does as she is bid.

Watching.

Waiting.

After a matter of minutes, his intentions become clear.

They are not the only two still awake.

Hero leans forward, despite herself, and watches as Claudio’s familiar suit stalks the halls. He paces in and out of navigation’s broad doorway, seemingly at war with himself.

Hero looks to Don John. Don John tilts his head.

“You knew.”

“Last time?” And what a relief, to hear him acknowledge what, since she’d woken, she’d suspected. “I did.”

“And you let him kill me. Just as you killed me before that.”

It is difficult to say whether or not there is pity in his expression – but no, that’s not the right word. Hero looks on Don John in his white suit and sees something cat-like, almost playful in its bitterness.

“It is a shame you have not made it through that first night,” he tells her, almost casual. “Though it is better, now, that you know what he is capable of. He is a far greater danger to your loved ones than I have ever been – I do not know whether to envy or despise him for it.”

The lights above them flicker. Hero feels her knees threaten to give out as she’s hit with a sickening sense of déjà vu.

“Are you the one doing this?” she asks – demands. “This – repeating?”

“Me? No.” Despite his expression, it sounds like the truth. “I’m as lost as you as to why this continues to happen. Your dear cousin and her love, at least, seem unaware as to the repetitions, as does my...brother. As for him –” and he motions towards the screen again – “who’s to say?”

Hero looks back in time to see Claudio freeze in the shadows. Almost immediately after he stills, the oxygen alarm starts to blare over their heads.

She is out of her seat immediately and moving for the door. When Don John does not follow, she freezes, her hand ready to open up the door out into the hall.

“You are not afraid of him?”

“I? I have no reason to be.” And there is that smile again, on the edge of too many teeth but so, so bitter.

Hero feels something instinctive in her soul shrink back at the sight of it.

“Run, lady,” says Don John, or the thing that claims to be him. “But keep this kindness in mind – and try not to die so quickly this time.”

Hero runs.

*

At the end of the night, she is not the only one to make her way to restore the ship’s oxygen. Almost everyone wakes in time to find both Margaret and Claudio with their hands on the proper scanners, waiting for the ship to notice them.

Don John stumbles in just before Beatrice and Benedick, though how he manages it, Hero does not know. He doesn’t look at her as the questions start to soar through the room and instead only speaks with his brother.

Claudio, still lingering near the door, looks the picture of innocence. Hero cannot help but stare as he directs the conversation, suggesting first a power failure – and then deliberate sabotage.

“Who else can be to blame but a stowaway?” he insists, waving his arms about. “Come – if we split up, we can lure this coward out and be done with this misadventure once and for all.”

Don Pedro and Don John agree with him almost at once, while Benedick looks to Beatrice. Beatrice, in turn, looks to Hero – as does Margaret, across the room.

Hero moves close to her cousin on instinct – and that seems to tell the men enough.

“I’ll go looking,” says Benedick, moving over to stand with Claudio and his ilk. “Beatrice, keep to your comms. Ladies, to bed. Come first shift, we will regroup and see for ourselves what may be wrong here.”

Margaret murmurs her consent, though, through her mask, Beatrice looks less than satisfied. “The lord speaks, and the ladies go as they are bid, hither and thither as sheep in the bower. May we not yet want for a better shepherd!” she calls as Benedick goes, trailing behind the other men.

Hero feels her heart singing in her throat, but she cannot bring herself to make sense of her thoughts.

It will not take long for the men to die, she knows – though if he is half as clever as he thinks he is (and if Don John has spoken true), Claudio will not hesitate to send Don John spinning out the airlock in the aftermath that follows.

And so she plays her hand.

As Beatrice herds the women back towards their quarters, Hero insists on bringing them all something from the cafeteria. Beatrice offers to go herself, but then even Margaret manages to work up the energy to tease her about absconding with Benedick under the cover of the third shift’s dimmer lights. Despite the pounding of her heart in her chest, Hero cannot help but smile as Beatrice rounds on the other woman immediately, insisting that she’s wrong even as Margaret smirks back.

She makes her way into the cafeteria before Beatrice can notice she’s missing, then sets about her work.

It is not difficult to guess where Claudio and Don John may have led their victims, nor how they may have paired off. For the princes to travel together would be to raise suspicion – thus, Claudio would have been for it, whereas Don John would have been against.

Benedick, then, is with Claudio – if he is still among the living.

Hero moves after Don John.

The ship, for all of its size, is not as large as it seems on the ground. She makes one round, then another, until her gut draws her towards the small garden kept nearest to the engine.

To her horror, she is the distraction that kills Benedick.

She comes into the room to hear these two dear men arguing over something superficial, barely a serious conversation. Then, as Benedick turns to greet her or chide her, but Claudio has not seen her –

There is a spike through his stomach.

Hero screams and stumbles back in the doorway, one hand trying to cover her mouth. But Benedick slumps to the ground in front of her, leaving only Claudio in his bloodstained suit to stare at her, his eyes wide.

“Oh, Hero,” he sighs, some perfect imitation of a love-struck lamb. “How I wish you hadn’t seen that.”

For a long moment, she considers begging – but she remembers the Claudio who accused her the last time they lived this.

Hero knows what’s coming next.

And still, she runs.

She hears Claudio calling after her as she bolts from the greenhouse. Whatever means he has to get ahead of her, she knows he will use – and so she avoids any of the rooms nearby. Instead, as his voice goes quiet, she presses herself against the wall and switches off her comms.

The quiet is almost deafening, but it may be enough – just maybe – to keep her alive.

When the seconds she’s needed have passed, she doubles back. The vent in the greenhouse has been disturbed, but she pays it no mind. Instead, she crouches next to Benedick’s body and tries to hide herself among the greenery. In her mind, she sees his final moments over and over again; the bright, jolly light leaving his eyes, his mouth dropping from a smile into shock.

Hero dares not close her eyes, but cannot bring herself to look at the slowly-growing pool of blood in front of her.

The vent grate shifts.

Hero presses herself deeper into the greenery – but it not Claudio who comes out of the vent. It is Don John, his own suit bloody but his face the picture of…

Something.

He shakes his head when he sees her, crossing his arms over his chest. “You knew this would happen,” he accuses, coming to crouch down in front of her. Hero pulls back from him, but he makes no move to kill her.

Don John studies her for a long moment, head tilting to the side. “Why did you leave the safety of your nest, little bird?” he asks. “You already knew of the predators about.”

Hero swallows hard. She reaches for her voice and forces it from her lungs. Without her comms on, it seems to echo against the inside of her helmet.

“I couldn’t let him get Beatrice. Not when he already had Benedick.”

The sound Don John makes it – not understanding, but thoughtful once again. He glances back towards Benedick’s cooling body, then towards Hero again.

The vent grate rattles.

And several things happen at once.

Hero feels tears spring to her eyes, even as Don John stiffens in place. They have seconds, maybe less – but he looks at her, really looks at her.

Then, he makes his offer.

“Do you want revenge?”

There is no time to consider. The vent slides open; Claudio’s suit is bold against the dim light of the room. Benedict’s body is between them and him, but it is no obstacle when the man himself is long departed.

Hero looks at Don John. She tries to summon Beatrice’s rage, some recollection of hatred – but there is only fear.

Only opportunity.

So she nods.

And Don John understands.

Her last moments of life are full of rage and fear. Then, as gently as a lover, Don John reaches forward –

And snaps her neck.

Round Four

Hero wakes.

Hero wakes hungry.

She opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling of a too-familiar bunk. The air scrapes at her, too cold and too hot all at once.

Across the room – there is Beatrice, pulling her hair back from her face. There is Margaret, groping for a bottle of water. Out in the hall, there is the familiar laughter of Claudio and Benedick.

Claudio, who betrayed her not once, but twice.

Claudio, whose eyes met hers across the cafeteria table and who dared – _dared_ – to tell her that he could have loved her before sending her out into the cold expanse of space.

And in the quiet of it all, there is Don John. Hero sits up, robotic, and blinks as he meanders past the women’s bunks, as nondescript in his white suit as he ever is.

Before the door to the bunk slides closed, she briefly – briefly – meets his eye.

Their shared gaze does not last. His eyes glance over her in something almost like a lack of recognition. And Hero, with this new monster thrumming in her veins, comes to several conclusions in quick succession.

He is human.

She is not.

And this is the gift he has given her.

She does not know if he remembers the feeling of this hunger ripping through her belly. She does not know if he remembers the sucking cold of the vacuum beyond them; what it’s like to come away from that dragging sensation to find yourself horribly whole.

But he is human. And she is not.

And nothing more than that matters much anymore.

The door to the hall slides shut. Across the room, Margaret grumbles – something; Hero does not lend her an ear.

She shoos Beatrice on ahead of her to breakfast, promising to join her shortly. The smile she manages at Margaret is all teeth, but there is only kindness in her eyes.

Beatrice leaves the two of them behind. Margaret, unknowing, turns her back to gather her supplies for the day.

Her death is quick. Quiet. It looks, for all the world, like an accident.

(And some small part of Hero mourns her sweet friend, but it is drowned out eternally by that thrumming, powerful need in her gut to consume.)

Hero leaves her pink suit behind, smearing it with some of Margaret’s blood. She smashes open the face mask before moving for the corner vent and tucking herself inside.

Whoever comes to find them here will think it a double kill; a spat, maybe, if she’s lucky, but probably not.

Her time is limited.

(And if she’s careful, Beatrice will survive the weeks it takes for the repair ship to come for her. Benedick, too, maybe – but no more than them.

Don Pedro will die.

Don John – may die; she has yet to decide.

But above all else, Claudio will die.)

Hero lets this alien body move itself forward, her mind focused only on her hunger. If this is what she must be to survive on the ship, then so be it.

There may be truth after all to the phrase Don John sang to her, that first time in the airlock – that sometimes a lady must die to live.

**Author's Note:**

> (I feel like I should post a 1k sweet piece as an apology; I'm really not sure about this one.) 
> 
> Let me know what you thought! I wasn't sure how this was going to land and remain uncertain, but I hope it's another strange twist and turn within this winter challenge.
> 
> Fun little tidbit: I stole the Quadrants from Star Trek: The Original Series.


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